C A L L F O R P A P E R S N L D B ' 2 0 0 3 8th International Conference on APPLICATIONS OF NATURAL LANGUAGE TO INFORMATION SYSTEMS Burg (Spreewald) near to Cottbus, Germany June 23-25, 2003 http://www.nldb.org Since 1995 the NLDB conference aims at bringing together researchers, industrial and potential users interested in various applications of NATURAL LANGUAGE in the DATABASE and INFORMATION SYSTEMS field. The integration of databases and natural language has been an utopia for a long time. Nowadays, this is an accessible convergent point on which a lot of researchers are focusing, mainly due to the large progress of research in natural language and to the development of new technologies which allow the storage of real semantic electronic dictionaries. Each aspect of an information system life cycle may be improved by natural language techniques: database design (specification, validation, conflict resolution), database query languages and application programming that use new software engineering research (e.g. natural language program specifications). As information systems are now evolving into the communication area, the term databases should be considered in the broader sense of information and communication systems. DEADLINES: Submission of abstracts: Jan 6, 2003 Submission of papers: Jan 15, 2003 Announcement of acceptance: March 1, 2003 Deadline for submission of the final version: April 10, 2003 Conference date: June 23 - 25, 2003 NLDB HISTORY: Previous conferences have been held in Versailles (France), Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Vancouver (Canada), Klagenfurt (Austria), Versailles (France), Madrid (Spain) and Stockholm (Sweden) and have attracted researchers from all the continents. PUBLICATION: The proceedings are going to be published in the Lecture Notes in Informatics (LNI) of the Springer Verlag, Berlin. Additionally, selected papers may be submitted for the special edition of the Journal of Data and Knowledge Engineering. CONFERENCE CHAIR : Bernhard Thalheim thalheim@informatik.tu-cottbus.de PROGRAM COMMITTEE CHAIR: Antje Düsterhöft duest@et.hs-wismar.de MAJOR TOPICS OF INTEREST : Natural Language for Web Information-Intensive Services Semantic information retrieval Semantic Web Semi-structured models and associated languages Web usage, content and structure mining for discovering semantics Concept taxonomies and web mining Learning taxonomies and ontologies from the web Information extraction with machine learning Natural Language in Conceptual Modeling Analysis of natural language descriptions Requirement engineering Terminological ontologies Paraphrasing Dynamic modeling Verification, consistency checking Metadata harvesting Natural Language Interfaces for Data Base Querying/Retrieval Natural languages interfaces for database querying Verification of database queries by paraphrasing Semantic analysis for information retrieval NL interaction with databases Natural-Language-Based Integration of Systems Linguistic aspects of view integration Linguistic aspects of data warehouses Natural language queries to multi-databases systems Data integration and data cleansing Large-Scale Online Linguistic Resources Electronic dictionaries Question-answer corpora Informal ontologies Linguistic databases Digital libraries Using Computational Linguistics for IS Multilingual information systems NLP in requirements engineering NLP in knowledge management Ontology-driven NLP Semiotics and fundamentals Management of Textual Databases Text classification Information extraction and detection Text mining for creating metadata Document management Hypertext and Hyperbases SETTING: The Spreewald area is one of the most famous natural resorts and recreation areas in Germany. The area is based on a delta of the river Spree with a large number of small channels which can be used by paddling boats, etc. Burg is in the center of the Spreewald. It is very closed to Cottbus and easy to reach via train or car. The airports in Berlin and in Dresden are connected via direct trains. SUPPORTING EVENTS: The organizers would like to provide for opportunities to disseminate work in a variety of ways. Those interested in preparing tutorials or panel discussions are invited to contact the conference chair. Demonstrations of prototypes or tools are also welcome. PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Chair Antje Düsterhöft Members: Alfs T. Berztiss, University of Pittsburgh, U.S.A. Mokrane Bouzeghoub, PRiSM, Université de Versailles, France Hans Burg, Ordina Alignment Consulting, The Netherlands Gary A Coen, Boeing, USA Isabelle Comyn-Wattiau, Université de Cergy, France Günther Fliedl, Universität Klagenfurt, Austria Nicola Guarino, LADSEB-CNR , Padova, Italy Jon Atle Gulla, Borvegian Institute of Technology, Norway Udo Hahn, Freiburg University, Germany Helmut Horacek, Universität Saarbrücken, Germany Paul Johannesson, Stockholm University, Sweden Zoubida Kedad, PRiSM, Université de Versailles, France Christian Kop, Universität Klagenfurt, Austria W. Lenders, Universität Bonn, Germany Heinrich Mayr, Universität Klagenfurt, Austria Paul McFetridge, Simon Fraser University, Canada Elisabeth Metais, Université de Versailles, France Ana Maria Moreno, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain Odile Piton, Université de Versailles, France Reind van de Riet, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands Ans Steuten, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands Vijay Sugumaran, Oakland University Rochester, USA Veda Storey, Rochester University, Canada Bernhard Thalheim, University of Cottbus, Germany Roland Wagner, University of Linz, Austria Werner Winiwarter, University of Vienna, Austria Christian Winkler, Universität Klagenfurt,Austria Stanislaw Wrycza, University of Gdansk, Poland Mustafa Yaseen, Amman University of Applied Sciences, Jordan ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: chair: Vojtech Vestenicky (BTU Cottbus), Antje Düsterhöft (UAS Wismar), Karla Kersten, BTU Cottbus Thomas Kobienia, BTU Cottbus INVITED LECTURE: Yuri Gurevich, Microsoft Research